The enmity between the Quraysh and Muhammad remained very strong, in part because of the persecution, aggression, and confiscation of property the Muslims suffered at the hands of the Quraysh. On several occasions warriors from Medina intercepted caravans from Mecca going to or coming from Syria, but Muhammad did not want to fight a battle against the Meccans until they marched against the nascent Medinan community and threatened the very future of Islam. At this time the following Qurʾānic verse was revealed: “Permission to fight is granted to those against whom war is made, because they have been wronged, and God indeed has the power to help them. They are those who have been driven out of their homes unjustly only because they affirmed: Our Lord is God” (22:39–40). Muslims saw this verse as a declaration of war by God against the idolatrous Quraysh. In 624 an army of 1,000 assembled by the Quraysh marched against Medina and met a much smaller force of 313 Muslims at a place called Badr on the 17th day of the month of Ramadan. Although the number of those involved was small, this event is seen by Muslims as the most momentous battle of Islamic history, and many later crucial battles were named after it. Muhammad promised all those who were killed at Badr the death of a martyr and direct entry into paradise. Although heavily outnumbered, the Muslims achieved a remarkable victory in which, however, nine of the Companions of the Prophet (al-ṣaḥābah), the close associates of Muhammad and the faithful who were associated directly with him, were killed. Muslims believe that the battle was won with the help of the angels, and to this day the whole episode remains etched deeply in the historical consciousness of Muslims. Although seemingly an insignificant foray in a faraway desert between a few fighters, the battle changed world history.

The Quraysh, however, did not give up their quest to destroy the nascent Islamic community. With that goal in mind, in 624–625 they dispatched an army of 3,000 men under the leader of Mecca, Abū Sufyān. Muhammad led his forces to the side of a mountain near Medina called Uḥud, and battle ensued. The Muslims had some success early in the engagement, but Khālid ibn al-Walīd, a leading Meccan general and later one of the outstanding military figures of early Islamic history, charged Muhammad’s left flank after the Muslims on guard deserted their posts to join in the looting of the Quraysh camp. Many of Muhammad’s followers then fled, thinking that the Prophet had fallen. In fact, although wounded, he was led to safety through a ravine. Meanwhile, the Quraysh did not pursue their victory. A number of eminent Muslims, including Muhammad’s valiant uncle Ḥamzah, however, lost their lives in the struggle. The Jews of Medina, who allegedly plotted with the Quraysh, rejoiced in Muhammad’s defeat, and one of their tribes, the Banū Naḍīr, was therefore seized and banished by Muhammad to Khaybar.

The Jews of Medina then urged the Quraysh to take over Medina in 626–627. To this end the Quraysh helped raise an army of 10,000 men, which marched on Medina. Salmān al-Fārsī, the first Persian convert to Islam whom Muhammad had adopted as a member of his household, suggested that the Muslims dig a ditch around the city to protect it, a technique known to the Persians but not to the Arabs at that time. The Meccan army arrived and, unable to cross the ditch, laid siege to the city but without success. The invading army gradually began to disperse, leaving the Muslims victorious in the Battle of the Ditch (al-Khandaq).

When it was discovered that members of the Jewish tribe Qurayẓah had been complicit with the enemy during the Battle of the Ditch, Muhammad turned against them. The Qurayẓah men were separated from the tribe’s women and children and ordered by the Muslim general Saʿd ibn Muʿādh to be put to death; the women and children were to be enslaved. This tragic episode cast a shadow upon the relations between the two communities for many centuries, even though the Jews, a “People of the Book” (that is, like Christians and Zoroastrians, as well as Muslims, possessors of a divinely revealed scripture), generally enjoyed the protection of their lives, property, and religion under Islamic rule and fared better in the Muslim world than in the West. Moreover, Muslims believe that the Prophet did not order the execution of the Jews of Medina, but many Western historians believe that he must have been, at the very least, informed of it.

The Islamic community had become more solidly established by 628, and in that year Muhammad decided to make the ʿumrah (“lesser pilgrimage”) to the Kaʿbah. He set out for Mecca with a large entourage and many animals meant for sacrifice, but an armed Meccan contingent blocked his way. Because he had intended to perform a religious rite, he did not want to battle the Meccans at that time. So he camped at a site known as Al-Ḥudaybiyah and sent ʿUthmān to Mecca to negotiate a peaceful visit. When ʿUthmān was delayed, Muhammad assembled his followers and had them make a pact of allegiance (al-bayʿah) to follow him under all conditions unto death, an act of great significance for later Islamic history and Sufi belief and practice. ʿUthmān finally returned with Quraysh leaders who proposed as a compromise that Muhammad return to Medina but make a peaceful pilgrimage to Mecca the next year. In addition, a 10-year truce was signed with the Meccans.

Pilgrims facing the Kaʿbah in prayer in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during sunset.

In 628–629 Muhammad’s first conquest was made when the Muslims captured Khaybar in a battle in which the valour of ʿAlī played an important role. The Jews and Christians of Khaybar were allowed to live in peace, protected by the Muslims, but they were required to pay a religious tax called the jizʿyah. This became the model for the later treatment of People of the Book in Islamic history.

It was also at this time that Muhammad, according to Islamic sources, sent letters inviting various leaders to accept Islam, including Muqawqis, the governor of Alexandria; the negus of Abyssinia; Heraclius, the emperor of Byzantium; and Khosrow II, the king of Persia. There are several letters kept in various libraries today that some claim to be Muhammad’s original invitations, although many Western scholars have doubted their authenticity. Few, however, doubt that he sent the letters, although a number of Western scholars believe that they were addressed to the surrogates of these rulers. In any case, he emphasized in these letters that there should be no compulsion for People of the Book—Jews, Christians, or Zoroastrians—to accept Islam.

In 628–629 Muhammad finally made a pilgrimage to Mecca and reconciled members of his family and also of many of his followers. It was also during this pilgrimage that a number of eminent Meccans—including two later major military and political figures, Khālid ibn Walīd and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ—accepted Islam and that Muhammad’s uncle al-ʿAbbās, then the head of the Banū Hāshim family, is said to have secretly become a Muslim.

Meanwhile, Islam continued to spread throughout Arabia, although military expeditions to the north were not successful. In one battle at Muʾtah in Byzantine territory, Zayd ibn Ḥārith, the adopted son of the Prophet, and Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib, the brother of ʿAlī, were killed. Still, many northern tribes embraced Islam.

In 628–629 the Quraysh broke the pact agreed upon at Al-Ḥudaybiyah, freeing Muhammad to march on Mecca, which he did with a large group of the anṣār, the muhājirūn, and Bedouins. The Quraysh pleaded for amnesty, which was granted. After many years of hardship and exile, Muhammad entered Mecca triumphantly and directed his followers not to take revenge for the persecution many of them had endured. He went directly to the Kaʿbah, where he ordered ʿAlī and Bilāl, the Abyssinian caller to prayer (al-muʾadhdhin), to remove all the idols and restore the original purity of the Kaʿbah, which Muslims believe was built by Abraham as the house of the one God. All the Meccans then embraced Islam.

The Islamization of Arabia, however, was not as yet complete. The Hawāzin tribe rose against Muhammad, and the city of Ṭāʾif, which had treated him so harshly during his Meccan years, still followed idolatrous practices. Muhammad’s army defeated the Hawāzin but could not capture Ṭāʾif, which surrendered of its own volition a year later.

In 630–631 embassies from all over the Arabian Peninsula arrived in Medina to accept Islam, and by that time most of Arabia, save for the north, had united under the religion’s banner. Muhammad, therefore, marched with a large army north to Tabūk but did not engage the enemy. Nevertheless, the Jews and Christians of the region submitted to his authority, whereupon Muhammad again guaranteed their personal safety and freedom to practice their religion as he did for the Zoroastrians of eastern Arabia. At that time too the pagan Arab tribes in the north, as well as in other regions, embraced Islam. By 631 Muhammad had brought to a close “the age of ignorance” (al-jāhiliyyah), as Muslims called the pre-Islamic epoch in Arabia. He united the Arabs for the first time in history under the banner of Islam and broke the hold of tribal bonds as the ultimate links between an Arab and the society around him. Although tribal relations were not fully destroyed, they were now transcended by a more powerful bond based on religion.

Finally, in 632, Muhammad made the first Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca (al-ḥajj), which remains the model to this day for the millions of Muslims who make the hajj each year. This event marked the peak of Muhammad’s earthly life. At that time he delivered his celebrated farewell sermon, and the last verse of the Qurʾān was revealed, completing the sacred text: “This day have I perfected for you your religion and fulfilled My favour unto you, and it hath been My good pleasure to choose Islam for you as your religion” (5:3). On the way back from Mecca, he and his entourage stopped at a pond called Ghadīr Khumm where, according to both Sunni and Shīʿite sources, he appointed ʿAlī as the executor of his last will and as his walī, a term that means “friend” or “saint” and also describes a person who possesses authority. This major event is seen by Sunni Muslims as signifying a personal and family matter, while Shīʿites believe that at this time ʿAlī received the formal investiture to succeed the Prophet.

Late in the spring of 632 Muhammad, who had been considering another expedition to the north, suddenly fell ill and, according to tradition, died three days later on June 8, 632. His legacy included the establishment of a new order that would transform and affect much of the world from the Atlantic to the China Sea, from France to India. According to Islamic norms that he established, his body was washed by his family, especially by ʿAlī, and buried in his house adjacent to the mosque of Medina. His tomb remains the holiest place in Islam after the Kaʿbah; it is visited by millions of pilgrims annually.

The Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, a holy site in Islam second only to nearby Mecca.

AP

Muhammad and the Qurʾān

Those who do not consider Muhammad a prophet believe that the Qurʾān contains his words as compiled by his companions. For Muslims of all schools of law and theology, the Qurʾān is considered to be the word of God received by the Prophet and uttered verbatim by him to those around him. Moreover, there is a subtle and profound relationship between Muhammad and the Qurʾān. First, there are direct references in the Qurʾān to Muhammad, his nature, and his function. Notably, the Qurʾān asserts that he was a man and not a divine being, that he was the “seal of prophets” (khātam al-anbiyāʾ), that he was endowed with the most exalted character, and that God had placed him as the “goodly model” (uswah ḥasanah) for Muslims to follow. The Qurʾān is, in fact, the richest source for the understanding of Muhammad’s nature and mission.

Second, Muhammad was the person who best comprehended the meaning of the Qurʾān and was its first interpreter and commentator. Over the centuries all traditional Muslims have understood the Qurʾān through Muhammad’s interpretation, and whenever they recite the Qurʾān or seek to put its teachings into practice, they experience his presence. Islamic sages over the ages, in fact, have insisted that God granted to the Prophet alone the understanding of all levels of the Qurʾān’s meaning that humans could grasp and that those who later came to know something of the inner meaning of the Qurʾān were heirs to the knowledge given to Muhammad by God.

There is also something of the soul of Muhammad in the Qurʾān, which was, according to traditional beliefs, originally a sonorous revelation imprinted upon his heart and only later written down. If the text of the Qurʾān is comparable to words heard by the ear, the soul of the Prophet is like the air that carries the sound and allows it to be heard by humanity. According to a famous saying of the Prophet (known as ḥadīth al-thaqalayn), Muhammad said that, when he departed from the world, he would leave behind two precious gifts (thaqalayn): the Qurʾān and his family. Moreover, his wife ʿĀʾishah once asked Muhammad how he should be remembered after his death, and he replied, “By reciting the Qurʾān.” There is also a very subtle relationship between the Qurʾān and the Prophet that causes Muslims to feel his grace (barakah) whenever they read the Qurʾān, which they nevertheless understand to be the word of God and not of Muhammad or any other human being.

The Sunnah and Hadith

The deeds of the Prophet, called the Sunnah—which technically also embraces his sayings, or Hadith—are, after the Qurʾān, the most important source of everything Islamic from law to art, as well as from economics to metaphysics, and are the model of behaviour that all pious Muslims seek to emulate. At the heart of the Sunnah is what may be called the quintessential Sunnah, which concerns the spiritual life. The Sunnah also covers a broad array of activities and beliefs, ranging from entering a mosque, practicing private hygiene, and dealing with family to the most sublime mystical questions involving the love between humans and God. In addition, it addresses everyday activities, including the greeting that Muhammad taught Muslims to offer each other—al-salāmu ʿalaykum (“may peace be upon you”)—a greeting still used in tens of languages from Jakarta to London and from Rio de Janeiro to San Francisco. Intimate matters of personal life as well as the social and economic life of Muslims have been governed over the ages by the Sunnah. Even the details of all the major rites of the religion—that is, the daily prayers, the fasting, the annual pilgrimage, etc.—are based on the prophetic Sunnah. The Qurʾān commands believers to perform the canonical prayers, to fast, and to perform the pilgrimage, but it was the Prophet who taught them how to perform these acts along with other religious rituals such as marriage and burial of the dead.

During the Prophet’s life and shortly thereafter, his sayings were written down on media such as parchment, papyrus, and shoulder bones of camels. They were also preserved orally by a people whose long poetic tradition had been carried on solely by word of mouth in the period preceding the rise of Islam. In the 8th and 9th centuries, however, scholars began to collect the sayings of the Prophet after devising rigorous criteria for examining the authenticity of the chain of transmission (isnād). The result of this herculean task was the Sunni compilation of six collections of sayings known as the Ṣiḥāḥ (plural of Ṣaḥīḥ; “correct”), the most famous of which was compiled by al-Bukhārī. In the 10th century the Shīʿites brought together their own collection in four volumes known as The Four Books (Al-Kutub al-arbaʿah), of which the most famous was by al-Kulaynī, but some Shīʿite authorities believe that Shīʿism also has six canonical collections of Hadith. Most of the sayings in the Sunni and Shīʿite collections are the same, but the chain of transmission differs between them. Sunni Muslims believe that many of the sayings were transmitted by Ibn al-ʿAbbās and ʿĀʾishah, but Shīʿites accept only members of the household of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt) as legitimate transmitters. There are also a number of prophetic sayings known as al-aḥādīth al-qudsiyyah (“sacred sayings”) in which God speaks in the first person through Muhammad. In general, these sayings are of an esoteric character and have been of great importance in the development of Sufism.

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The prophet Muhammad was the founder of the religion of Islam. Followers of Islam, called Muslims, believe that Muhammad received messages from Allah (God). These messages were later collected into the Koran, the holy book of Islam.

(570?-632). "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah." This is the fundamental statement of faith in Islam, and it declares that Muhammad is the founder of one of the world’s major religions. He was also the founder of a state by his unification of Arabia. Within decades after his death his followers sent out armies that conquered the whole Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. This vast territory was unified, at least temporarily, in an Islamic empire (see Caliphate). Eventually the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, too, fell to Islam (see Ottoman Empire). The religion Muhammad founded became one of the most potent cultural forces in the world, and it plays a decisive role in the politics of the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. (See also Islam.)